Where Islam spreads, freedom dies

Cordoba is running a series of concerts, supposedly of the "Tres Culturas". This night it was the turn of some musicians from Morocco. Arabic music has never appealed to me. This is curious because I can listen to almost any type of music and get something from it. The Arabs seem to have some different conception of harmony from everyone else, though, which has always struck me as interesting given their singularity in other respects. Anyway, I went to this concert and actually enjoyed it. Maybe it was more Berber than Arabic.

I only mention this prelude because of what happened later, involving someone from Morocco. Who knows? Perhaps it was even one of the musicians themselves. I was walking home from a restaurant at about 11.30 pm. It was along one side of the Alcazar, next to the Guadalquivir river. This is a very long road and it was completely deserted. No traffic and no people, except for one guy coming towards me. As I walked past him, he said, "Buenas Noches". I said "Buenas Noches" and walked on. Then he turned and said, "Una pregunta (a question)". He struck me as a bit dodgy-looking, so I tried to put him off by saying I didn't speak Spanish very well and just kept walking. But he kept after me. When he saw I wasn't going to stop, he said he was a police officer and wanted to search my bag. This struck me as implausible. He had a slightly glazed look in his eyes as if he had imbibed some alcohol. As he claimed to be a police officer, he took some wallet out of his pocket, opened it slightly then put it away. He hadn't opened it enough to see what it was. I just walked away. He kept after me, though, still claiming to be a police officer and asking what I had in the bag. I asked him to show me his identification. He took out something and opened it. I saw that it was just a passport and said "Kingdom of Morocco" on it. I laughed when I saw this, said "Morocco," then walked away. Again he kept after me. By this time, my patience had been exhausted. There had still been no cars along the road during all this time. I had a heavy metal pen in my jacket pocket, my "combat pen" as I call it. I gripped it tightly in my right hand, though without taking it out of the pocket. He was going to lose one of his eyes to it, I decided, if he chose to go any further with this. I said, "Look, my friend ...". At that point I think he suddenly sensed that this wasn't going to end well for him and just decided to give up. He laughed and said something like, "You're just a guy trying to earn a living like me," then turned and walked away.

I looked for some real police officers to report him to but couldn't find any. I'll probably report it to the police tomorrow. It's very unlikely they'll be able to catch him but maybe he's been trying the same trick on others too. You never know. Just another vignette illustrating the Muslim enrichment of Europe.